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ALTAR OF FREEDOM 




MARY ROBERTS RINEHART 




Class _^ 

Book . 

Copyright N°. 



* ■ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



4Sp iflarp Eobertfii Etneljart 



T I S H . Illustrated in color. 

THROUGH GLACIER PARK. Illustrated. 

K. Illustrated. 

THE STREET OF SEVEN STARS. 

THE AFTER HOUSE. Illustrated. 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
Boston and New York 



THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 



THE ALTAR OF 
FREEDOM 

BY 
MARY ROBERTS RINEHART 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

The Riverside Press Cambridge 

1917 



,"R5 



COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY 
COPYRIGHT, I917, BY MARY ROBERTS RINEHART 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published April iqij 



.-$"0 
.MAY 12 1917 

^CU460759 



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THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 



THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 

Remember, boy, that behind all these men 
you have to do with, behind officers, and 
government, and people even, there is the 
Country Herself, your Country, and that 
you belong to Her as you belong to your own 
Mother. 

The Man Without a Country. 

We are virtually at war. By the 
time this is published, perhaps the 
declaration will have been made. 

And even now, all over the country, 
on this bright spring day, there are 
mothers who are waiting to know what 
they must do. Mothers who are facing 
the day with heads up and shoulders 
back, ready to stand steady when the 

s 



THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 
blow falls; mothers who shrink and 
tremble, but ready, too; and other 
mothers, who cannot find the strength 
to give up to the service of their coun- 
try the boys who will always be little 
boys to them. 

I love my country. There is nothing 
she can ask that I will not do. I am 
ready to live for her or die for her. 
Last stand of the humanities on earth, 
realization of a dream and fulfillment 
of an ideal, my home, my native land, 
— that is America to me. Because I 
am a woman, I cannot die for my coun- 
try, but I am doing a far harder thing. 
I am giving a son to the service of 
his country, the land he loves. 

4 



THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 

When I was a child, I lived on a 
quiet, tree-shaded street in this very 
city where now I am writing this. And, 
late in May of each year, when the 
ailanthus trees were in blossom, the 
street put up fresh curtains and red- 
washed the brick pavements. The 
cobblestones were swept, too. And 
then the procession came. 

I was twelve, I think, before I be- 
gan to get a lump in my throat as the 
long line of veterans went by. It was 
a long line then. I did not know ex- 
actly why I cried, except that those 
men and those tattered flags stood for 
something heroic and very sad. I 
know now, but it has taken years to 

5 



THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 
put it into words, and in those years 
the line has shortened to a handful. 
Even the one-armed drummer has 
gone now. The street, which was rough 
and hard to march on in those days, 
has been made smooth for their feet, 
but few are left who can march to that 
quiet God's-acre on the hill above. 

Now I know why, as a child, I wept. 
Those men had fought for something 
that was a part of me, like my mother, 
or my home : for my country. 

Many years later I again saw march- 
ing men. But now the men were young, 
and there were no flags and no drums. 
They were marching into battle. And 
they were not fighting for my country. 

6 



THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 

But they were fighting for the ideal 
on which my country was founded, for 
humanity against oppression and cru- 
elty, for the right of a man to labor 
in his own field, for the principle that 
honor is greater than life. 

I saw them living and fighting, and 
I saw them dying. I saw strange na- 
tions, men of different tongues and 
different colors, gathered together and 
becoming as one, against a common 
foe. And then I learned this: that the 
world is now but one great nation, 
drawn close by the creed that all men 
are brothers; and that in the midst of 
that great nation of the world had 
broken loose something terrible, some- 

7 



THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 

thing that must be killed, or the world 
dies. 

Once over there I saw a boy dying 
in a railway station. He knew two 
English words, so he said : — 

"All right. All right." 

It was all right with him. He had 
done his bit, and he knew that there 
were others to take his place, and that 
the world-nation would not rest until 
the war-beast was chained. It was 
"all right." 

And so now, on the brink of war, I 
know it is all right with us. 

We have been the melting-pot, but 
under the pot there has been no fire. 
Now the fire has come, a white flame, 

8 



THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 

and we will fuse at last. But it will 
burn and sear. And to that, I wonder, 
can we say, "All right"? 

War is a great adventure, the great- 
est adventure in the world. The adven- 
turers go forth to battle, eyes ahead. 
Mostly they are boys who go, because 
war is the young man's game, the 
young man's call. All over Europe 
boys have left their homes, with a 
shame-faced tear or two, perhaps, but 
with the great adventure ahead. And 
they have left at home a great empti- 
ness, a quiet that is not peace. 

Then, — and very suddenly, — they 

have ceased to be boys on a great 

9 



THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 

adventure, and are men, fighting men, 
patriots and soldiers. Something that 
had always been theirs had become a 
thing that had to be fought for. Not 
until it was menaced had they known 
how dear was their country. The flag 
had been but a flag. It became a sym- 
bol of home. 

I have lived to see my country's flag 
beside the altar of my church. 

Men fight wars, but it is the mothers 

of a nation who raise the army. They 

are the silent patriots. Given her will, 

every mother in this great land would 

go to war, if by so doing she could keep 

her sons in safety. It is easier to go 

than to send a boy. 

10 



THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 

Yet war is not necessarily death. I 
try to comfort myself with this. Per- 
haps it will help other mothers. It is 
a hazard, but it is a thing of vast re- 
wards and much cheerfulness, of de- 
mocracy, of big moments and little 
feasts, of smiles and grumbling, of 
labor and rest, and of that joy in his 
own kind that only the boy knows. 
And underneath it all, buried deep 
and never articulate, is that feeling of 
doing his bit for his country, which is 
the foundation on which a nation rests 
secure. 

I wish I could always remember 

these things. I have panicky times, 

when the sun dies for me, and my 

ll 



THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 

world goes black. But I am like the 
other mothers. I shall go through with 
it, and I would not have things other- 
wise. I would not have my son do 
other than he is doing. He is still in 
his 'teens, but he is a man, and this 
is his country. I have not raised him 
to be a shirker. 

Only — this is a matter for every- 
body. It is not my war, or his, or the 
war of those other college boys who 
are always the first to go. Just as we 
all benefit by the country, so must we 
share — and share alike — its dangers. 

Unless it is your war, this is not a 
democracy. If, as in the past, we have 
allowed the few to do our political 

12 



THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 

thinking for us, as even now in the 
churches the few earn for all of us the 
right to call this a Christian land, if in 
this war we allow the few to fight for 
us, then as a nation we have died and 
our ideals have died with us. Though 
we win, if all have not borne this bur- 
den alike, then do we lose. 

Sometimes, in these last troubled 
days, when every newsboy on the 
street under my window has been cry- 
ing War, I cover my eyes and see that 
gallant little first army of England, 
springing to the call, and facing, 
without hope, the great trained Ger- 
man army. It was the best England 
had, and it is gone, almost to a man 

13 



THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 

— because the mothers of England 
had not insisted that every man in the 
empire bear his share. 

What if now your boy and mine 
could be a part of a vast trained army? 
His chance would be better. Better? 
There would be no war. You and I, 
trembling for what may come, are 
paying the price of not having risen, 
an army of women, and demanded 
what now may come too late. 

Because we did not rise this situa- 
tion confronts us. For this is what a 
volunteer army means in this country 
to-day. For every high-spirited lad 
like yours and mine who goes out to 

fight, there are a hundred, a thousand, 

14 



THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 

men of fighting age and strength who 
will not go, men who have no country, 
but only a refuge from the oppression 
of Europe. 

Are we to suffer that they may live? 
Is this liberty of ours, this Land of the 
Free, without price? And will those 
hold it dear whom it has cost nothing? 

Yet, so great is my faith in this 
great nation, so sure am I that the 
principles on which it is built are en- 
during, that I believe all these things 
will be set right in time. The one thing 
that matters now is to do our part, to 
show to the world that America still 
believes that there is such a thing as 
honor, and such a word as right. 

15 



THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 

For — and this I believe as I do in 
my country — we are to end this war. 
And that is the greatest privilege a na- 
tion of the world may have. We have 
sat by, through such horrors as have 
turned the world to blood. But now 
we can come in our strength, and 
mighty strength it will be. So rich we 
are! So strong! So young! 

And the enemy is old — jaded and 
crafty and old : as old as cruelty is old. 
We are young and tireless and unafraid. 

I have seen a sixteen-year-old Bel- 
gian sentinel keeping watch over a 
part of the German army, and all its 
science was powerless against his keen 
young eyes. 

16 



THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 

But we must pay the price. And the 
cost falls heaviest on the women. 

No woman has the right to hold her 
son back if he desires to go to war. 
It is the fruition of the years in which 
she sought to make him a man. It is 
the vindication of his manhood. It is 
the crystallization of those very ideals 
which she taught him with his prayers. 

I decline to believe that there are 
mothers who will not let their boys 
strike back when they are attacked. 

But it is hard. Always the relation 

between mother and son is very close. 

As the boy grows up, the mother faces 

this, that he needs more than she can 

give him. He is still her world, but she 

17 



THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 
is no longer his. Life calls, work and 
play and love, and sometimes battle. 
And the mother cannot hold him. 

Everywhere are mothers, women 
who have patched small garments and 
tied up little wounds, who have built 
up a house of life out of millions of 
loving services, whose world has been 
the four walls of home. 

To such women comes the call for 
their sons, who are still to them, 
though men grown, but the little boys 
of the stockings, and the small wounds, 
and Christmas trees, and the Fourth 
of July. 

I do not fear for these women, but 
we cannot minimize what they do. 

18 



THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 

They will send their sons, because they 
know that a nation is but a great 
home, consisting of many small ones. 
Homes are the units of a nation, as 
men are of an army. And these women 
know that our homes are only safe so 
long as the country is. They know too 
that peace has fled from the earth and 
cannot be brought back but by God 
and the sword. 

Perhaps my own experience will 
be helpful. I am a home-woman, al- 
though now and then my profession 
has called me to strange places. Our 
family life has been very close. And, 
while I have little fear for myself, I 
am a coward for my children. 

19 



THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 

When, some weeks ago, war began 
to come close, I weakened, and I wrote 
my oldest son a letter. I was willing to 
have him do his duty, but I asked him 
to wait. Womanlike, I wanted time. 
I felt that surely this cross was not for 
me to bear so soon. 

Then, — and may he forgive me for 
telling this, because of its purpose, — 
after a day or two, he wired, asking 
his father and myself if we wanted him 
to be a quitter. 

I came to my senses then, and the 
necessary permission to enlist was 
signed and sent. Then I sat down and 
wrote to him, and said we would stand 
squarely behind him in whatever he did. 

20 



THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 

Easy? It was the hardest thing I 
have ever done. But I am glad now. 
I would never have forgiven him, I 
think, had he failed his country. But 
I nearly failed him. 

So I have given one son, and I stand 
ready to give my other two, if their 
country needs them, when they are old 
enough to go. 

But I am finding some things to 
cheer me. There is, for instance, the 
knowledge that the scandals of the 
Southern camps during the Spanish 
War will not be repeated. There we 
lost ten boys from disease to every one 
killed in battle. Think of it! We 
learned nothing from that war, but 

21 



THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 

we have learned greatly from the war 
in Europe. There will be no cruel and 
useless waste of life from disease. On 
the Mexican border there was prac- 
tically no sickness, although the nat- 
ural conditions were in favor of it. We 
have sanitarians, now, and water sup- 
plies will be watched. The inoculation 
against typhoid, too, has eliminated 
the disease, both in the European 
armies and here. Because it is waste 
that we fear. 

We are trying to feel, we women, 
that no cost is too great, if needful 
to preserve our country. But we will 
never be reconciled to waste of life 
through negligence. And this I prom- 

22 



THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 
ise, now. Let such negligence occur, 
and let me know of it, duly investi- 
gated, and I will make the press of 
the country ring with it, to the eternal 
shame of those J^ho are responsible. 

I have been to war, and I know this : 
that men living in fearful surroundings 
may be kept healthy by proper care. 
This care is what we demand, those of 
us who cannot fight, but who are bear- 
ing our own burdens, nevertheless. 

One or two things have helped to 
make our decision hard for us. Per- 
haps the most important is this : there 
is no great hatred of the enemy, how- 
ever much we abominate the things 
the German Government has driven 



THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 

an acquiescent people into doing. We 
all know Germans here whom we like 
and respect. We see them, family folk, 
sober and industrious and God-fear- 
ing, all about us. They are not Huns 
or vandals. And all the knowledge we 
have of a nation gone mad to order 
hardly counteracts the effect of the 
friendly human contacts of our daily 
lives with the Germans we know. 

We forget that the German we know 
has come here to escape the very thing 
that has wrecked the old world ; that in 
coming to this land of the free he has 
followed an ideal as steadily as back 
in the fatherland his kindred are follow- 
ing after the false gods of hate and war. 

24 



THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 

He is German, but he is not Prus- 
sian, although he may be Prussian- 
born. 

Then, too, women know too much 
now of war to enable them to make 
the sacrifice easily. War has become 
more than a word. It is become reality, 
and only its horrors live for them. 
And so far but little emphasis has 
been laid on the great things for which 
we will fight. We talk in numbers. 
We stress the fine points of interna- 
tional law. We think of bond issues 
and submarines and guns — and the 
women sit and roll bandages and 
brood, and care little for all these 
things. Why not something of the 

25 



THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 

real reason for this war, of the hatred 
for ruthless cruelty, the contempt for 
our rights, the scorn of the little na- 
tions, and of the privilege of helping to 
bring back to a world that is destroy- 
ing itself the priceless boon of peace? 

How afraid we are of airing our love 
of our country! How shame-facedly 
we rise to the national anthem! How 
many excuses a man will give for going 
to war, except the fundamental one 
that he loves his country and is going 
to stick by her though the heavens fall ! 

Little boys, these men of ours, hid- 
ing their deepest feelings with a gibe! 

Some things we women must learn, 
and now is the time to learn them. 

26 



THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 

Sacrifice is an old story to women. 
They have always known it. But not 
sacrifice to an abstract ideal. Sacrifice 
to an ideal, then, — and personal service. 

And this personal service, mothers of 
America, is not rolling bandages for the 
other woman's son. 

That hurts, but it is true. This is 
no time for evasion. And it is not be- 
cause I have made my sacrifice that I 
say it. It is because, unless we all give, 
unless our army is large enough, those 
who have failed in their duty are send- 
ing the best youth of the country to 
death. It will be murder. 

In return for what we give, we 
women of America have the right to 

27 



THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 

demand certain things. First of all we 
can and must demand time that our 
boys may be trained. We have taken 
a long time to go into this war. And 
because the country would not believe 
that we must eventually be involved, 
we have lost precious years. 

When, now nearly two years ago, 
I came back from the war in Europe, 
I brought with me two convictions: 
First, that the German Government 
had thrown aside its mask of law and 
order, and was following war along 
lines so atrocious that it must be 
checked or civilization dies. Second, 
after conferring with men high in the 
Allied Governments, that sooner or 

28 



THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 

later we should inevitably find our- 
selves involved: it was but a matter 
of time. 

I came home terrified. I tried to 
talk about it. It seemed to me that we 
could not sit back unarmed, with only 
our brave little army, — less than a 
single day's losses in battle over there, 
— and do nothing. 

But I was as a voice crying in the 
wilderness. I was not alone, of course, 
in my wilderness. There were many, 
but the country heard us not. It lis- 
tened to Belgium, and sent aid. It 
helped the pathetic little French or- 
phans. It shook its head over the Roll 
of Honor in the " Illustrated London 

29 



THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 

News," and it went to church on 
Sundays and thanked God that we 
were out of it. 

An obstructive Congress, instructed 
from its constituencies, refused to 
listen to talk of preparation. The 
Army tried to get a hearing, and the 
Navy tried, but both failed. It is 
not the fault of the Democratic Party 
that we are to-day as we are, although, 
insomuch as our President is head of 
the Army and of the Navy, it is the 
Democratic Party which will control 
the war. 

It was, indeed, that stanch old 
Democrat, Thomas Jefferson, who 
said: — 

30 



THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 

"We must train and classify the 
whole of our male citizens and make 
military instruction a regular part of 
collegiate education. We can never be 
safe until this is done." 

Later on he went still further: — 

"I think the truth must be obvious 
that we cannot be defended but by 
making every citizen a soldier." 

It is the fault of a great people who 
have forgotten or have never learned 
that the world is only one tenth as 
large as it was when this Republic was 
founded. And that, instead of being 
isolated from this war, the conflict is 
and has been from its beginning but 
just over the edge of the horizon. 

31 



THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 

What else must we demand, now 
that the war-beast is creeping closer, 
when his head is reared above the sky- 
line? What else have we a right to 
ask, we women who cannot sit in the 
seats of the mighty, but to whom the 
nation must turn for soldiers, now and 
in future generations? 

We can ask this: This country of 
ours has been hag-ridden by politics. 
We have the right now to demand that 
party lines be forgotten, and that the 
nation act as a whole, politically; that 
the best man serve, regardless of his 
party. 

This must not be a "party" war. 
If any man put his party before his 

32 



THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 

country, that man is a traitor. We are 
no longer Republican or Democrat or 
Progressive. We are Americans. 

Not until universal service had re- 
moved the war in England from party 
lines was there anything adequate 
done. Then, and only then, did Eng- 
land begin to put forth her best ef- 
forts. 

And this we can ask: — 

This must not be a bureaucrat's 
war. 

Civil administration in the field has 
always failed. War is a highly spe- 
cialized business, the most highly 
specialized business in the world. And 

we who give our best have the right to 

33 



THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 

demand the best. We can have no 
bungling. 

The English Field Marshal Wolse- 
ley, writing of our Civil War as a 
military expert, said: "The Northern 
prospects did not begin to brighten 
until Mr. Lincoln, in March, 1864, 
with that unselfish intelligence which 
distinguished him, abdicated his mil- 
itary functions in favor of General 
Grant." 

War is not a thing for amateurs in 
high places. 

If our own history means anything 
to us, if the tragic experience of Eng- 
land has taught us anything, it is that 
the army in the field should not be a 

34 



THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 

Washington-controlled army, beyond 
the supplying of men, arms, and equip- 
ment. 

Do you know what a company com- 
mander must do in the day's work? 
He must enroll and recruit his company 
to a strength of one hundred and fifty 
men. He must get them clothed, 
equipped, and fed, and he must keep 
them clothed, equipped, fed, doctored, 
sanitated, cheerful, and amused. 

Any woman who has tried to do all 
of these things for one stirring lad may 
multiply these by a hundred and fifty, 
and no maternal instinct to help out, 
and see that the company commander 
has a full day even in peace times. 

35 



THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 

Then he has to drill his men, and in 
war he has to lead them. He must 
give them every chance for life if he 
can. He must die with them if it be 
necessary. But he must do with them 
the thing he has been assigned to do. 

Is that work for the amateur? 

In the Mexican and Civil Wars our 
professional fighters were Indian fight- 
ers and frontiersmen, splendid and 
hardy men accustomed to hardship. 
But they were not conversant with 
modern military methods. The result 
was civilian officers, taken from shops 
and offices, and the further result, in 
the Civil War, that a struggle which 
might have ended in a year took four. 

36 



THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 

But we did not learn anything from 
that lesson. For we are about to com- 
mit again the same folly, and from the 
same necessity. 

Then, again, we have the right to 
demand enough time. Because we 
have wasted two years is no reason for 
hurry now, when haste means sending 
our boys untrained against a highly 
trained enemy. 

Do you know that McDowell was 
urged to take his volunteers into ac- 
tion by popular clamor and against 
his better judgment before their three- 
months' enlistment expired, and that 
the result was the unhappy battle of 
Bull Run? 

37 



THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 

All this means but one thing to me, 
a mother. It means time to train our 
boys and properly equip them. And 
it means professional military leaders. 

And this is pertinent now, because 
what we have done before we may do 
again. In the Civil War each State 
was called on for a certain number 
of regiments. Prominent men then 
raised these regiments, and they were 
officered by local civilians. That was 
not such a hardship then, because our 
boys were to face other regiments re- 
cruited and officered in the same way. 

Rut surely we will not do this now. I 
protest. I want the best, not only for 
my son, but for all the sons who are so 

38 



THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 
valiantly offering themselves. I can- 
not stand back silent, with the mem- 
ories I have of what war is, with the 
death and misery and wanton destruc- 
tion of Flanders before me, with the 
scar of the iron heel of Germany on my 
heart. I protest. 

The Plattsburg idea has borne 
abundant fruit. It has shown three 
things : — 

1st. That individual training can- 
not be had in less than several months 
of field service. 

2d. That organization cannot be 
had even in so short a time. 

3d. That professional leadership is 
necessary as opposed to officers ap- 

39 



THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 

pointed from civil life at the outbreak 
of hostilities. 

You who considered prayerfully the 
best doctor for your child when he 
was ill, are you going now to place his 
life in unskilled hands? 

This morning I stopped at one of the 
recruiting stations and talked to the 
clear-eyed young soldier on duty. — 
They are a fine lot, this little regular 
army of ours. I like to talk to them. 
They look me in the eye. Do you re- 
member teaching your little boys to 
face the world, head up ? — This young 
soldier had been seven years in the 
army. He had one more year, and un- 
less there was a war, he was going to 

40 



THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 
quit then. He liked it, but he had 
done his bit. No, there were not 
many men applying. Yes, he guessed 
we should need all we could get. 

Then he gave me this appeal to the 
young patriots of the country, flaming 
now with the fire of that highest emo- 
tion of all, love of country: — 

"Men wanted under thirty-five 
years of age, for the United States 
Army. Special inducements to Phar- 
macists, Musicians, Bandsmen, Electri- 
cians, Clerks, Bakers, Cooks, Barbers, 
Teamsters, Carpenters, Blacksmiths, 
Horseshoers, and other Mechanics." 

God of our fathers! Not special in- 
ducements to Patriots, Men who love 

41 



THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 
their country, Men who believe in 
liberty, Men who hate cruelty, Men 
who would avenge Belgium, Free Men, 
Fighting Men! 

And, farther down, it is not, "Come 
and do your bit," "Your country calls 
you," or "Save the Flag." It offers, 
forsooth, "a chance to see the world." 
Those are the very words ! 

So to-day we are on the edge of war, 
or at war. And we ask, not for boys of 
fire and steel, but cooks and teamsters 
and blacksmiths. 

But the American boy has imagina- 
tion, if our War Department has not. 
And he is coming, in his thousands and 
tens of thousands. 

42 



THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 
Nothing can hold him back, — not 
danger, not inadequate preparation, 
not anything under the blue sky where 
once he sailed his kites and sent up his 
Fourth-of-July rockets. Not even the 
mother he loves. 

What are we going to do, then, we 
mothers, when the tumult and the 
shouting have died, and the long wait 
comes? We will pray. The churches 
of France are full of kneeling women. 
And we will work. 

There is no spectacular work for 
mothers in a war. They cannot drive 
ambulances, or guide aeroplanes, al- 
though they are capable of doing both. 
There will be no need of the wig- 

43 



THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 

wagging that some women are so pain- 
fully learning ! But they will work for 
the Red Cross, and they will make up 
such little packets as only mothers can 
make, — toothbrushes and chocolates 
and fresh socks and gingerbread, and 
a Bible and playing-cards and cigar- 
ettes. 

And in between times, they will 
wait, in that quiet that is not peace. 

That is what millions of women are 
doing just now, while you are reading 
this. 

There are two wars being waged to- 
day. One is the war of hate, and one is 
the war of love. And this last is the 
bitter war, because it is being fought 

44 



THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 

in women's hearts, between their fears 
and their patriotism. I know. 

And because fear is evil, it will go 
down to defeat. Women are brave, 
and mothers are the bravest of all 
women, for they have faced the Geth- 
semane of child-bearing. They will 
not weaken now. 

Napoleon said, " Give me the mothers 
of France, and I will make France." 

So this is how I see the situation to- 
day, as it affects me and others like 
me. If I believe in my country, as God 
knows I do, if I love it, and that too 
He knows, I must do my little part, 
my bit. 

45 



THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 

This the country must know : that 
women are ready to do their part. 
Else we are not free women, but slaves. 
And this the country must know, too : 
that the women demand that it do its 
part. 

The best of preparation, of skill, 
of guidance, of every sort of provision, 
is what we require and will have. 

We will not fail America. Let it not 
fail us. 

But she will not. America, last 
stand of the humanities on earth, 
realization of a dream and fulfillment 
of an ideal, our home, our native land, 
we mothers stand ready. 



46 



THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 

More than fifty-two years ago an 
American woman received this letter. 
It was written to one mother, but it 
belongs to all mothers, everywhere in 
the world, who have seen their sons go 
forth to war and leave behind them 
those empty places in the heart that 
are never filled: — 

Executive Mansion, November 21, 1864. 

Dear Madam : I have been shown in 
the files of the War Department a state- 
ment of the Adjutant-General of Massa- 
chusetts that you are the mother of five 
sons who have died gloriously on the 
field of battle. I feel how weak and 
fruitless must be any words of mine 
which should attempt to beguile you 
from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. 
But I cannot refrain from tendering to 

47 



THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 

you the consolation that may be found 
in the thanks of the Republic they died 
to save. I pray that our Heavenly 
Father may assuage the anguish of your 
bereavement, and leave you only the 
cherished memory of the loved and lost, 
and the solemn pride that must be 
yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice 
upon the altar of freedom. 
Yours very sincerely and respectfully, 

(Signed) Abraham Lincoln. 



the END 



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